and then something happens ~

[lookingland]

just finished watching Brokeback Mountain.

i would first like to qualify my response by saying:

1. i really like ang lee's work in general.

2. i think heath ledger is a good actor.

3. i had no biases going into this movie. the mind was so open my brains were spilling out.

all that said:

1. what a crashing bore.

2. what ennis does to his wife was despicable to the point that i coulda cared less about his travails later down the road. i mean, character-wise it's interesting, but nothing ever redeems him for me. he's worse than jack in that he never takes any action for anything he wants and then he blames jack and whines to him and we're supposed to be feel sorry for him? bleh. boring. dumb.

3. pretty scenery.

other than that, i have no idea what i just watched. i guess i liked the scene where jack tells his father-in-law off and that one almost-good moment where jack's mother gives ennis a paper bag for the shirt, but otherwise i was mostly bored and irritated and felt like i was wasting my time. and was that supposed to be Juarez? because, er, there's a big freaking mountain in Juarez. the landscape looks nothing like that on the border (okay, that's really nit-picky).

i didn't hate this, but i did feel like it was a short story dragged (and dragged) out to make a full-length movie. the interminable opening sequences (actually the whole first half of the movie) was just insanely dull.

eh.



i really like the final image of the hanging shirt.
just wish i actually cared about it, or them, or
what it all meant.
[/end review]

Comments

Re: My thoughts:

[littlewings04.livejournal.com]

No offense! Merely pointing out that there are so many different ways of coming to this film that it's hard to say that the people who loved it did for reason x or y. It's a story that appeals on many different levels and in many different ways. (The fact that I've also spent a substantial amount of my life around ranch hands and working in the saddle also made the work ring true for me in a way I'm sure it doesn't for more urban folks.)

America in general is struggling with this idea of people being either fish or foul or good red meat. You're either gay or you're straight in the US right now. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, etc. The way Ennis was presented, both in the short story and in the film is as a man who had a watershed moment with another man on that mountain. Whether or not he's a Kinsey 6 or a Kinsey 0 isn't the point--and it shouldn't be the point for anyone. Ennis fell in love with another man. He was sexually attracted to another man. And whether or not it happened again in his lifetime isn't really as important as people want to make it into being. Sexual identity is a spectrum of experiences, desires and needs, not a binary "if ever involved with same gender, homo, if ever involved with opposite, hetero". Ennis, if anything, would probably be bisexual. But there's no way of knowing because the world he lived in and his childhood experiences limited his sexual expression to hetero-by-default. The fact that he had that relationship with Jack at all is what makes the film about identity. For one summer, he threw off his whole life's experience to take the chance and love. He suffered because he couldn't embrace that love, because he lacked the courage to step outside societal expectations, he was never fully who he had the potential to be on that mountain. Brokeback itself functions as a mythical sort of place, it represents freedom from expectations, from society and civilization. It is the only place where Ennis is not afraid. And that is why they spend their whole lives trying to get back there and can never succeed. In a very mythological sense, when one leaves fairyland, when one walks out of paradise, one cannot ever look back and regain what was lost. The short story is clearer on that point, I think. It's part of the tradition of the West where the wilderness is a sort of innocent Garden of Eden but yet frought with peril. That does come from knowing Proulx's work, I think.

So, in short, it's not about whether Ennis and Jack are "really gay". There is no "really gay". There are people who sleep with the same gender their whole lives. There are some who sleep with the other gender their whole lives. There are some people who sleep with both. And there are still yet some who sleep with the opposite gender their whole lives, save for one or two forays into the same. And all of those are very real, very meaningful and important expressions of sexuality. Albert Kinsey's research is ignored about this. We exist on a scale, not a binary. In Brokeback, these two men have an experience that changes who they are and shapes their whole lives. If that is not a part of creating identity, then I don't know what is.

Re: My thoughts:

[lady-morgaine.livejournal.com]

Brokeback itself functions as a mythical sort of place, it represents freedom from expectations, from society and civilization. It is the only place where Ennis is not afraid. And that is why they spend their whole lives trying to get back there and can never succeed.

Good point. One of my LJ friends pointed out the role nostalgia plays in the film, and I think he was making a similar point.

Your thoughts on the whole gay vs not gay issue help clarify the worldview of the people who made the film, so I thank you for that. I do understand that a one-time experience with a person of the same gender doesn't necessarily mean you're gay! But I'm not really up-to-date on the state of research on sexuality, and the things I do hear sound so confused. So knowing what particular perspective this film is coming from is helpful.

Re: My thoughts:

[lookingland.livejournal.com]

i think the point about nostalgia is an interesting one ~ and may be part of why i don't find myself connecting to this film at all (because the nostalgia is so central to their relationship).

i'm not a nostalgic person. nostalgia baffles me. i understand being fond of something past, but acting in the present on that fondness always strikes me as potentially foolish and irresponsible.

if i judge the characters at all, it's for that:creating their identity out of thinking they could get back something that was ephemeral and unreal (i.e. fantasy). it only shaped their lives because they let it. for them to cry in their beer after the fact seems a weak choice dramaturgically. it may be the "human" choice, but for me personally it doesn't make for a good story (and that's my whole objection to the film ~ i think the story is pretty weak)

certainly a different way to examine it.